A Little Bit Bad

'This darkly funny, slippery novel is a hoot to read and will please fans of Miranda July’s All Fours' The i Paper

'A sparkling and subversive debut ... this tragicomic tale of an American woman’s illicit romance is also a gripping murder mystery' Guardian

'Compelling ... full of wisdom on addiction, obsession, motherhood and marriage' Daily Mail

Perdita Jungfrau thought she was going to be married to her husband forever, so falling in love with Nando, her ‘anarcho-Marxist’ handyman, is a crisis.

Life seems to put every possible obstacle in their way: she’s pregnant, he has a girlfriend, he’s fifteen years younger, she’s terrified of messing up her children and equally drawn towards this magnetic man who entrusts her with his deepest secret.

Now it's three years later and Nando has been murdered.

As her bewildered husband tries to make sense of the wildly unpredictable person his wife has become, Perdita has other things on her mind. For starters, who is the mysterious woman sitting outside her house in a parked car all day? How can she stop her adored baby brother from being pulled under by his opioid addiction? Can someone with a childhood like hers ever be the mother her children deserve?

And most of all, what should she do with the searing memories of the affair that turned her life upside down?

Author: Cassandra Neyenesch

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Crime & mystery, Fiction: special features

Published on 4 Jun 2026 by Penguin Books Ltd.